More dino softness

Thanks, Chris Samuel, for your extra soft-dinosaur links, and for PlanetLA’s pointing them out to me.

I have a problem with a lot of this manner of featured reportage, which is that the reporters’re pretty much universally ready to jump on some explanation to the exclusion of all others, typically either “the researcher made a mistake” or “it’s a plot by such-and-such conspiracists”, although with Mary Schweitzer’s reports in particular there seems to remain a definite air of “hey, maybe this really did happen after all?”

Well, if it did, maybe we can do a real Jurassic Park type experiment? T. Rex on the hoof? It would make alligators seem simple & easy by comparison, but if it could be done we might learn a lot of things about dinosaurs in a hurry.

I can imagine a lot of people having a problem with that. (-:

However, it would free some surprising but apparently real data for genuine consideration. What would we learn?

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new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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